Concept Art – I Appear Missing and Conveniently Forgot to RSVP to the Search Party

The last six years of my life have been spent in the exact same way. Fact: my autopilot setting is so solid and well practiced that my pilot is as foreign to me as a distant planet. Which is perhaps why I’ve had such a rough time writing lately. How can I possibly have anything worth saying if I haven’t experienced anything worth writing about?

Originally this was going to be a thought blog on fate and plans coming together almost too easily and how change, while scary, can be awesome. Instead I found this:

I’ve been in the service industry since I was 17. I hated it, people frighten me, and yet, lo and behold, all the years later I am still here. Why? Money is one answer, the obvious one, but not the whole one. Hell, the real answer is, despite being terrified every shift my senior year in high school, restaurants are now comforting to me because they’re a constant. A continuous, reliable routine. Of course, this routine is actually a donut: round and round with nothing in the middle. I have not changed, I have not grown, I have not tried. I honestly haven’t had to; restaurants have only ever asked me to stay as I am. And remember what’s been, because it will be again. Regular guests, repeat clients, standard menu. Memorize and Recite Anew.

I like my job, but I hate my stagnation. And I wonder if only drastic measures can shake me out of the well worn path I blindly follow. I’ve been thinking about moving recently. Recently as in the last three days. Apartment, volunteer work, job, school… so far everything I need to do to survive and everything I want to do to live have been coming together almost too easily. And I ask myself:

Has change always been this easy and was I just too afraid?Probably.

Maybe, more than maybe, I’ve been so focused on the things I didn’t ask for and didn’t like that I never bothered asking the odd little waiters for what I do want.

So that’s where I am. Maybe moving. Forward for the first time in forever, and still scared but at least ready to start trying again. I want to have an adventure. Cliché as it is, I want to live before I have to die.